All about JEE (Main)

JEE (Main) is the first challenge that you need to face on road to securing a seat in a top engineering college.

What is JEE (Main)?Aspirants have the choice of appearing in any one of the two types of papers, or both. Paper 1 is for those going in for the BE/BTech courses in colleges accepting JEE (Main) ranks while Paper 2 is for those who wanting to go in for architecture and planning.

JEE (Main) is for all engineering aspirants who have appeared/passed Class 12 from national/state recognised boards. It is conducted for admission to undergraduate engineering programmes at National Institutes of Technology Indian Institutes of Information Technology, other centrally-funded technical institutions, and institutions funded by several participating state governments. This exam also restricts the number of attempts to three.

The Paper 1 of JEE (Main) will also be an eligibility test for the JEE (Advanced), which the candidate has to take if he/she is aspiring for admission to the undergraduate programmes offered by the IITs.

Mode of examPaper 1 will be conducted in two separate modes offline (pen and paper-based examination) mode and online (computer-based examination) mode. Paper 2 will be conducted only in pen and paper-based examination mode. A candidate will opt for either pen and paper-based or computer-based examination modes for Paper 1 only.

Structure of the examPaper 1: It is a three-hour paper comprising three sections: part 1 - physics, part 2 - chemistry and part 3 - mathematics. There are 30 questions in each of three subjects; which are of objective type-multiple choice with single correct answer. In each section there are 30 questions of four marks each. One should be very careful as there is one-fourth negative marking for every question.

Paper 2: This three-hour paper consists of part 1 - mathematics, part 2 - aptitude and part 3 - drawing. The mathematics section has 30 objective type multiple-choice questions with single correct option and one-fourth negative marking. In this part, the syllabus for mathematics includes common topics from Class 11 and 12 CBSE or state Boards. The aptitude section has 50 objective, multiple-choice questions with four options and one-fourth negative marking.

Held on April 7, 2013, (offline) and between April 8 and 25, 2013, (online), JEE was reportedly taken by about 14 lakh students in over 1500 centres in India and abroad. About 1.5 lakh top candidates, based on their performance in the JEE (Main) 2013 (Paper 1) (including all categories) will be eligible to appear in JEE (Advanced) 2013 on June 2, 2013.

JEE (Main) 2013 analysis

In JEE (Main) 2013, the paper was of total 360 marks and there were 90 questions (30 each in physics, chemistry and mathematics) each of four marks with one fourth negative marking. There were 90 questions in JEE (Main) 2013 including 43 questions from the Class 12 syllabus and the rest from the Class 11 syllabus

PhysicsIn physics, 40% questions were easy, 50% were moderately difficult and 10% difficult. More weightage was given to chapters like mechanics (23.33%) and electrodynamics (30%), optics (13.33%), modern physics (16.67%) and SHM and waves (10%), heat and thermodynamics (6.67%)

ChemistryIn chemistry, 40% questions were easy, 50% were moderately difficult and 10% difficult. Weightage was given to chapters in physical chemistry (40%). However, equal weightage was given to inorganic and organic chemistry